"Beautiful, terrible things; covered in carvings of dolphins, cherubim and seraphim. Not ornament you understand, they are essential moving parts. That is, I should say, it's essential that all parts are moving. Deeply moving."

The End of History. Corporate thought
control cutting under and under and under, to become something else. The
best Clone in a long time. Tectonics are shifting.

Cutting-edge research suggests that literary
preference is reflected in dreams - that those
who enjoy fiction have "stranger" dreams, that fantasy readers tend towards
nightmares, that romance-digesters get what they deserve. In other
news, a man whose talk is of oxen will probably dream of oxen.

"It’s not so much an inner struggle as an inner
‘secondary school debating society’. Now I feel that I was running away
from the name because the name was me. So, to cut a very long story
short, I’M KEEPING THE NAME. Besides, Neil Hannon is a sucky name for a
pop-star."

The Divine Comedy is
alive and well as
Neil alone; recording new stuff and touring with new friend
Ben Folds. Good.

"There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die."

Well, roaring or going "bloop bloop", one of the two. Ichthyologists have been recording odd deep-sea noises for
a while - "bloop" is apparently one of the more mysterious ones. Listen for yourself; very unnerving
stuff. [via Found]

Shortfall is a
search-engine game that Tyrethali and I nomicked into shape the other
evening - one player picks a URL, then everyone guesses a search term that
will return it in the top ten but not at the number one position. It's
good to think about familiar things from a less-than-obvious angle, and to cruelly
pigeonholeyourfriends. (And
yourself.)

I'd forgotten this; the Grauniad's Aristotle lets you see how any MP voted in recent key votes.
Easy transparency. Good thing.

Stand has
a solid summary of the government's plans to let
any
old public authority skim through your browser history, email logs,
mobile-phone location trail, and the rest. Take a stand, make a difference; fax your MP about it before
it goes up before the House on Tuesday. (Although my local MP, the mighty Norman Baker
is, naturally, already on the case.)

Christ on a Bike! - "The most exciting aspect is the 'miracle' option, which really opens the game up. For instance, on the washout course you can choose to go over the water rather than through it."

Smiths and Morrissey ringtones. Fantastic news. The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get on an "increase volume until answered" setting is, clearly, the only option.
[via Dan]

DocNomic might be starting up again in the
imminent future, if interested players can kick enough momentum
into it. Having already gotten the "doctor", "document" and "dock"
themes out of our gestalt system, it'll be interesting to see what the fresh ruleset of Round Four evolves into. Game design by
chunking. Join today.